Japan Notches a Nobel

Japan started the 2012 Nobel Prize season off with a bang, as a wunderkind 50-year-old star scientist shared honors Monday in physiology/medicine, the first of the medals to be awarded this year.

“I was able to receive this award because Japan as a country supported me,” Shinya Yamanaka said at a hastily arranged news conference at his Kyoto University on Monday evening. In the middle of the event, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda called his cell phone to congratulate him.

Associated Press

Shinya Yamanaka speaks during a news conference at the Kyoto University after winning Nobel Prize.

Mr. Yamanaka is just the second Japanese ever to win in the category — and the first since 1987. He has been considered a candidate to win the prize for about three years. Currently a stem-cell biologist at Japan’s Kyoto University, he made a breakthrough in 2006, when he discovered how to reprogram adult cells in mice to their embryonic state. He named them “induced pluripotent stem cells,” or IPS cells. In 2007, he turned human skin cells into stem cells. Scientists say the technique can be used to repair or replace damaged organs and eventually to combat diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Japan celebrates widely its Nobelists. Public broadcaster NHK had Mr. Yamanaka’s win as its top news for the evening on the otherwise quiet Sports Day holiday. Other TV channels immediately ginned up features on Mr. Yamanaka, with reaction from his colleagues, signaling the high expectations going into the day that he might win the award. Throngs of reporters waited for his arrival at Kyoto University, hours before his scheduled appearance.

Mr. Yamanaka, in some ways, has been the scientist equivalent of novelist Haruki Murakami, long listed as a favorite to win the prize for literature, which will be announced Thursday. The Japanese press has been touting Mr. Yamanaka as a potential Nobelist for three years, and he has appeared frequently both on TV and in Japan’s major dailies after his breakthrough discovery in 2006.

Raised in Osaka, Mr. Yamanaka, 50, was engrossed in judo and rugby in junior high and high school. He has said he became interested in becoming a doctor after he was frequently taken to the hospital with sports injuries. Originally trained as an orthopedic surgeon, Mr. Yamanaka received his doctorate at Osaka City University in 1993 and became a postdoctoral fellow at Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco until 1996.

In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun in April, Mr. Yamanaka recalled being clumsy and slow during surgeries: “If I became a researcher, I thought I’ll be able to develop new drugs or treatment.”

“My father probably still thinks in heaven that I’m a doctor,” he said in the interview. “IPS cells are still at a research phase and have not treated a single patient. I hope to link it to actual treatment soon so I will be not embarrassed when I meet my father someday.”

At his press conference Monday, Mr. Yamanaka said his celebration would be short-lived.

“I feel a great joy, but at the same, I feel a strong sense of responsibility,” he said. “I will swiftly return to my research since my work is not done yet. I will concentrate on my research from next week, and I will need to write a paper soon since my students are waiting. That is my job,” he added.